Some people think I'm the rudest woman they know. I can walk straight past friends in the streets because they look like strangers.

I can meet an old colleague and not have a clue who they are. It's not that I don't remember their name, it's that I don't remember their face.

Don't laugh, but I recently introduced myself to someone at a conference and he said,

I know, we've just had breakfast together

awkward but it's the story of my life

but let me give you these cards

so if you go through them one at a time

so this is quite I don't want to give you any

any extra things Richard Nixon no and I don't know that's Simon Oh, so it is. Anyway. Here's a man with a goatey. No idea. Who's he? That's Brad Pitt. Is it really? It's not as if I haven't seen Brad Pitt before and I'm not some old

fogie who's out of touch with popular culture I just have an extremely

embarrassing socially crippling deficiency in my brain, which makes it really hard

for me to remember faces and therefore to recognize people. The neurological condition

I suffer from is called face blindness or

proso-Pagnosia and I'm not alone it probably

afflicts about one in 50 of you listening to this program.

Among us are the actor Stephen Fry and the former politician Patricia Hewitt.

Not recognising faces is socially less acceptable. People actually don't forgive you.

They think you're using a female excuse and they don't really get it.

You hate yourself. You want to stand yourself. It's the most awful, stupid affliction.

I would bump into one of our members of parliament in the corridor and he would tell me something.

It was often something really quite important.

Of course this was somebody, at least in theory I knew rather well.

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